By BEN MCCARTY
News staff writer
February 19, 2008

It was a successful first day at state for the Hood River Valley wrestling team.

Six of eight competing wrestlers for the Eagles moved into the winners’ bracket in Thursday’s competition.

Sean Baker, Robert Frasier, David Frasier, Joe Johnson, Cory Miller and Brandon Gass all won matches to advance to quarterfinal matches Friday morning.

The wins allowed the Eagles to finish the day ranked fourth in the team standings with 42.5 points, behind Newberg with 48 points, Canby with 59.5 points and Roseburg with 81 points.

At 119 pounds Robert Frasier won his pigtail play-in match against Lucas Vallejos by forfeit. He then beat Hans Bernard of Wilson by a technical fall when he went up 15-0 in the second round.

At 130 pounds his older brother David pinned Tylor McVey of Aloha as time ran down in the second round for a first round win, his only match of the day.

Sean Baker did not take long to put two opponents into the consolation bracket in a pair of first day wins. He pinned Ryan Welling of Southridge in 3:44 in a championship pigtail and then pinned Eric Raul of Putnam in 55 seconds in his first-round match. On the other side of the 135-pound bracket Sam Mecham of Roseburg spoiled Cody Grahn’s chances of a rubber match with Baker.

The Gresham sophomore beat Baker in the final regular season dual match of the season only to lose to Baker in the Mount Hood Conference district tournament. Mecham defeated Grahn, the No. 2 seed at 135 pounds, with a 5-3 decision win in their first-round match.

At 140 pounds, Brandon Gass avoided being pinned in the first round by Devan Schiewe of West Linn, only to storm back in the second round and pin Schiewe at the 3:09 mark.

Joe Johnson finished off Robert Ross of North Medford with relative ease at 215 pounds, pinning him 1:28 into the match. On the opposite side of the bracket, Tyrell Fortune of Lakeridge, ranked No. 1 in the nation at 215 pounds, made quick work of Kevin North of Newberg, pinning him 1:25 into his first round match.

In the 285-pound class, Cory Miller won his pigtail match and his first-round match without much difficulty. He pinned Andrew Cox of Tigard in 29 seconds in a pigtail match, and then pinned Brandon Labarico of Franklin 1:06 into their first round match.

Taren Bennett at 145 pounds and Lucas Mondragon at 189 pounds were the two Eagles to lose on the day. Bennett lead North Medford’s Ryan Mahoney in the final seconds of their first round match before Mahoney earned two reversal points in the final five seconds to get a 7-6 win. Bennett then won his first consolation-round match, defeating Robert Secord of Benson in a 13-6 decision before dropping a 9-7 decision to Andy Gaul of Southridge in the second consolation round.

Mondragon lost 5-1 to Cody Monsur of Clackamas in the first round of 189-pound competition, but then responded with a 5-3 win over Nick Top of Franklin in the first round of consolation matches.

The tournament runs through today at the Portland Memorial Coliseum.